The annual list shows that downtown’s top 15 employers have a combined 49,491 workers, up from 43,013 at this time last year.

Besides Target, Ameriprise Financial Inc. and U.S. Bancorp boosted staff. The overall increase includes the one-time impact of Hennepin County Medical Center merging with its physicians’ group, Hennepin Faculty Associates; that launched the hospital to No. 5 in the rankings. Not counting those doctors, who already worked downtown, the top employers still added 2,586 new workers this in the past year.

“A few years ago we actually saw the numbers going down due to the bad economic times. We clearly have seen some substantial recovery over the past 12 months,” said Sam Grabarski, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council. “Some companies are not only hiring employees to fill some of the positions they eliminated a few years ago, but are even adding jobs beyond that.”

Grabarski estimates the total downtown workforce at approximately 160,000. That’s not quite at the high of 165,000 workers from five years ago, but it’s a significant rebound after dipping to 150,000 during the recession.

Target once again topped the ranking with 12,216 downtown employees, up from 10,848 a year ago. The Minneapolis-based discount retailer added workers as it brought its Target.com operations in-house and began ramping up for its 2013 expansion into Canada. Target said in December that it plans to move 3,900 corporate technology workers from downtown to Brooklyn Park between this year and 2014, but that’s not expected to change its downtown staffing levels long-term.

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